Circumcision: “It’s a human rights issue”

Dr. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, a geneticist and director of Ben Shalem, tells host Ilene Prusher that some of the conclusions about health benefits in this recommendation are simply wrong. He believes that those in favor of circumcision for religious reasons are looking for medical justifications for a procedure about which they have already made up their minds. In addition, since 88 percent of white males in the US are circumcised, Dr. Zoossmann-Diskin believes that white males in the CDC are grasping at medical justifications for procedures that were done to them and that they are doing to their children.

“It’s a human rights issue,” he says, “You are not allowed to amputate healthy organs from unconsenting minors, even if you think it’s going to prevent some diseases.” For this reason, standard procedures such as tonsillectomies and appendectomies have been abolished for minors in the US, “so now it’s only the foreskin.” Similarly, there are no arguments for the removal of equivalent female tissue in order to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, even though studies have shown this tissue to carry the same level of risk as the foreskin.